File conversion errors

A key point with typesetting is that (as mentioned earlier) all of the text and image files are imported into a ‘container’ and then manipulated there. Little may be done to an imported illustration apart from resizing or cropping (all the other enhancement work has already been done in an image editing program like Photoshop; indeed, this will usually be where any further editing is done, the typesetting file simply updated with the revised image file).

In contrast, the imported text is converted at import and in most cases any dynamic link to the original text file is lost.

Errors often occur with these file conversions. Use of special text (as discussed in my previous post) is often a cause of later grief but it isn’t the sole cause, however (indeed, we are sometimes totally mystified why this or that text corruption occurs). Here are a few examples:

Your fancy Arabic script, keyed in Word from right to left, may turn into left–right nonsense (though to anyone other than an Arabic specialist it still looks fine – it looks Arabic).

Macrons (like those above the ‘o’ here in Tōkyō) are relatively simple to key in Windows but can turn to junk on the Mac.

There may be a software bug in the typesetting program that arbitrarily changes certain character combinations to something else (a recent bug in InDesign – since corrected – changed certain characters to a full stop; this was tricky to pick up).

Obviously, conversion errors can also happen with image files but this is far less common.

The typesetter keeps an eye open for such conversion errors but ultimately it will be your responsibility at the proofing stage to pick up any such problems. I’ll return to this in a later post.